I am a bit embarrassed with how long it has taken me to get to this. However, I still feel it’s better late than never. This past Sunday I ran in the 48th annual Marine Corps Marathon. It was an incredible experience that I will cherish forever. I ran alongside four of my friends: Reilly, Ricky, Jack (Skandy), and Matteus. Which is what reminded me to write this post. During my last week or so in Europe, my close friend Matteus and I took a trip to visit Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. One of my our main motivations in visiting was getting to participate in the King’s Day celebration. The holiday occurs annually to celebrate the King’s birthday. Even though the king doesn’t hold much power any more, his birthday is still celebrated by the Dutch people. We had seen some pictures online of how crazy things got in Amsterdam during King’s day and knew this would be the perfect time to visit. Matteus also had a friend living in Amsterdam who we could stay with. His friend, Lucas, is earning his bachelors degree from Amsterdam University of Science. Lucas and Matteus were childhood best friends in Mozambique. Matteus’ parents actually met in the Peace Corps and so did Lucas’ so their parents were already connected. They still go on family vacations with both their families semi-frequently.
Because my school had already ended, I was able to leave pretty early in the week whereas Matteus and the rest of my friends were still finishing up with their exams. So, I went early and met Lucas and got to experience some of Amsterdam on my own. The first day I went, I spent a bit of time walking around and seeing Amsterdam Science Park where Lucas lives and where his University is. There were also a ton of University students because the building he lived in housed almost entirely University students. It was cool to be around so many kids our age since this wasn’t exactly our experience living in Vallcarca in Barca. When I arrived on that first day, I was quite hungry. Lucas recommended a food truck down the street serving Turkish Pizzas. These ended up being one of my favorite things I ate while abroad. I got two or three that first day alone and kept going back for more throughout the week. After eating, I went to a local coffee shop to do a bit more work, catching up on blog posts and looking for internships. I really enjoyed walking around the neighborhoods and seeing all of the cool European architecture (and the cars). I also saw this cool wooden playground at a local school.
The next day, I went on a biking tour of Amsterdam. This was really a cool way to see a bunch of different parts of the city. We went around the central part of the city and then took a little break from the tour at a cafe in Vondelpark. At the cafe, I got a brew and some fries. Then, we got back on our bikes and headed into a wealthier part of town with some really nice little houses. It was really cool being able to see both the center of the city and the more secluded little neighborhoods.
After our tour was over, I took a little stroll around downtown Amsterdam. I walked down one of the central streets with some really cool stores and came across a few thrift stores. I was trying to find a cool orange shirt for King’s Day, but almost everything remotely orange was sold out. So, I decided to go with a cool orange-ish red-ish Honolulu marathon shirt. You’ll see it in some of the pics from King’s Day below. After that, I met back up with Lucas and got to meet his roommate, Finn. Finn was short and blonde and looked quite European. He was born in Amsterdam and lived there until he was about eight years old, and then moved to Orange County, California. He was really nice and had a lot of connections to the community because his family had lived there prior. His dad was playing in a concert that night with some other locals to celebrate King’s Day. So after drinking a few bubbly beverages, we hopped on our bikes and headed to the concert. There was a big stage set up in the middle of the street. Finn’s dad was playing the trombone. They were playing a bunch of classic American songs as well as a handful of European songs I had never heard. I also got to meet some of Finn and Lucas’ friends. His mom even bought each of us a few beers and we danced for a few hours in the streets of Amsterdam. Everyone was wearing orange. It was our first taste of the King’s Day festivities that were to come!
The next day, Matteus arrived and we all prepared for the King’s day Festivities. I know I mentioned some stuff about King’s Day earlier, but thought I would add a bit more down here. King’s day is a Dutch national holiday celebrated on April 27th which was the birth of King Willem-Alexander. When the Dutch monarch is female, the holiday is known as Koninginnedag or Queen’s Day and, under Queen Beatrix until 2013, was celebrated on 30 April. However, because Willem-Alexander is the current monarch of the Netherlands, we celebrated Koningsdag (King’s Day) on the 27th. This was one of my favorite memories from our time in Europe. It was such an amazing celebration surrounded by so many people. Everyone gathered in the streets, wearing orange, drinking and dancing. What more can you ask for. It was especially cool to do it with Lucas, Finn, and their University friends who all showed us an amazing time. We would bounce from block to block, dancing in the streets where people were hosting DJ sets out the windows of their canal-view apartments. Here are some of my favorite pictures from that amazing day.
The day after King’s day was a rest day. Lucas had to work (he worked in a camera shop – he is very into photography) so Matteus and I went for a biking day trip around downtown Amsterdam to check out everything. We saw some really cool buildings and some of the famous tulips. We also walked through a cool local flea market and got some lunch. Everyone was so friendly and kind. Amsterdam felt like a utopian city. Everything was just cleaner, the people were nicer and happier, the roads were perfectly paved, the biking infrastructure was well designed and obviously reduced the amount of pollution from cars in the city, and my favorite thing was the way they manage trash collection. Outside most residences is a mailbox-like trash bin that has a sliding slot for you to place your trash into. Beneath the mailbox trash bin is a giant metal box housing all of the trash placed into the trash bin. Then, on trash day, the trash truck will come around and a guy will get out and use a video game style controller with a joystick to operate a giant magnet that lifts the trash storage box out of the ground. It was efficient and so innovative. I’ve included some pictures to try and better explain this concept. This really blew me away.
Here are some more of the pictures from our little day trip around Amsterdam.
The day after that, Lucas had to work again so it was up to Matteus and I to find something fun to do. We decided to explore Amsterdamse Bos, a park a few train stops away from Lucas’s apartment. The park was HUGE. We kept walking and finding new areas we hadn’t seen before. It was gorgeous weather and such a nice adventure for Matteus and I. I learned on my bike tour that the name Netherlands means “lower land” due to the naturally flat terrain. This was especially evident in the wide open fields we walked through in Amsterdamse Bos. We saw so many interesting, very European looking people (and dogs). We loved it here and I’d love to come back again one day.
The next day featured yet another one of the coolest experiences I had while in Europe. I think traveling with people who are residents of the place you’re visiting really enhances the experience. Being with Lucas, and getting to meet his friends was super cool in itself. But, their knowledge of the area and things to do, really made our time in Amsterdam special. A lot of our friends who went to Amsterdam took a booze cruise style boat tour of the canals, but Lucas recommended we get a boat, some beers, bread, hummus, and drive through the canals. I didn’t even know this was an option but this instantly piqued my interest. I found this to be a common theme throughout my time abroad. Most people who were on our Maryland-in-Barca trip would do a lot of the same things and go to a lot of the same places. But, some of my favorite experiences were those that I hadn’t seen others doing and that were usually unplanned (scuba diving in Tossa de Mar, driving a boat through the canals of Amsterdam, walking around and exploring different neighborhoods in Barca by myself). I suppose it comes back to the idea of “taking the road less traveled.” Here are some of the pics of when we drove through the canals.
On our last day before flying home, we got breakfast with Lucas before he had to go into work. I ordered pancakes and bacon which was the most interesting plate of pancakes and bacon I’ve ever had (the bacon was inside of the pancakes). We also saw some really cool graphics that I wish I could have purchased, but they were a bit too big to squeeze into my luggage. After breakfast, Matteus and I took a 40 minute bus ride to see the Keukenhof tulip festival. We didn’t pay for entry into the actual festival, but we did get to see the fields of colorful tulips that lined the outside of the entrance. Rows of vibrant tulips were all around the parking lot.
After seeing these tulips, we took a walk down the street looking for food and stumbled upon a quaint little European Dutch neighborhood. We found a beautiful church and some really pretty little houses and streets. European suburbia.
Later that night, Matteus, Finn, Lucas, and I went to see the Super Mario Bros. movie in a local theater. Even though this wasn’t a super uniquely European experience, it was still really cool to experience how different the movies are in Amsterdam. We first entered into the downstairs part of the theater which was basically a bar with bites to eat where people were sitting and drinking before heading up to their theater. We each got a beer and headed up to the fourth floor (I had never been up that many flights of stairs to get to a theater). The movie was alright, but this was just a really fun thing to do in another country. Especially because we got to bring our beers into the theater 🙂
The next day was the day of our flight, but it wasn’t until 4pm. So, Matteus and I took one last bike ride around Amsterdam Vondelpark. Our final Hoorah!
After leaving Amsterdam, we had only 8 hours in Barca before our flight back to the states. It was a very weird and blurry couple of hours with not much sleep. But after a very long travel day, I was welcomed back home with open arms!
I had such an amazing time in Europe and I am so thankful for this experience. Thank you to everyone who made this trip possible and I hope you enjoyed following along through this blog. I hope to travel much more in the future and I will do my best to record my travels on the world wide web.
